Today marks the start of an exciting collaboration between The Lens, Community Lab and the largest independent grant-making trust in Scotland, The Robertson Trust.
With over seven years of tried and tested content that helps organisations embrace entrepreneurship from within (intrapreneurship), The Lens is taking a bold step into the future with its development of PRISM — a digital peer-to-peer learning space.
The Lens developed PRISM to become the go-to skills development tool for social enterprises, charities, and the public sector.
PRISM consolidates over seven years of content into an accessible digital portal that The Lens will initially roll out to over 800 grantees and partners of The Robertson Trust who are tackling poverty and trauma in Scotland. The digital learning content is supplemented with facilitated workshops and coaching to guide the cohort and help them get the most out of the experience.
Hosted on Community Lab, PRISM harnesses the power of peer-to-peer, cohort-based learning to promote the right conditions for innovation. Members are encouraged to provide feedback to their peers as they work through the learning modules and to share their ideas to foster a more collaborative approach.
“Building on the success of the shift towards online learning, we decided to spend time developing an extensive online platform, offering a more flexible experience for members. We are excited to work with both the Robertson Trust and Community Lab on our first roll-out of PRISM and work with its network in what we hope will be the first of many successful partnerships.”
-Steve McCreadie, CEO at The Lens
From Community Lab’s perspective, our goal is to help organisations give voice and creative licence to their people. True to our bottom-up approach, PRISM empowers front-line staff to vocalise their challenges and to work with peers to find innovative solutions that will improve the lives of the people they support.
“Great things happen when people shift from closed conversations to open discussions, siloed thinking to collaborative ideation, secrecy to transparency, and independence to interdependence. I see our collaboration with The Lens as an important opportunity for organisations that are tackling poverty and trauma in Scotland to empower their front-line staff, solve complex challenges, and create the right conditions for cultural transformation.”
-Andrew Barrie, Founder of Community Lab
Over the years, The Lens has trained over 1,500 people across a range of charities, social enterprises and local authorities — developing more than 200 ideas to help drive innovation in social enterprises and purpose-led businesses.
We hope that this ongoing collaboration and the initial roll-out with The Robertson Trust will help to scale their impact and lay the foundations for a more collaborative, innovative, and empowered Scotland.
